Group that fights homelessness gets funding for housing

VISTA  The county approved $3.4 million in funding this week for a Vista nonprofit focused on eradicating homelessness.

Solutions for Change will use the money, as well as $1.1 million in private funding, to purchase and renovate the 22-unit Primrose Apartments in an unincorporated area near Vista.

The complex will house families, mostly single mothers with children, who are in the second stage of a nearly three-year rehabilitation program. They will pay rent according to low-income housing guidelines, about $840 for a two-bedroom apartment, said Chris Megison, president and executive director of Solutions for Change.

The $3.4 million given to the group by the Board of Supervisors comes from Community Development Block Grants and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“We’re often criticized down here in San Diego for not taking our share of the homeless,” County Supervisor Bill Horn said. “Next time you hear criticism of the Board of Supervisors not handling the homeless I want you to go visit Vista because they do a great job.”

The grant is structured like a loan, but as long as the apartment complex is run as affordable housing it does not have to be repaid, Megison said.

He hopes to begin renovating the complex in the summer and placing families in it around Christmas.

The apartment complex project is part of an initiative led by Solutions for Change called “Finding Our Way Home.” It aims to place 200 homeless families in homes, for which they will pay rent, and keep them off the streets for good. Megison said the funding will help bring the organization more than halfway to that goal.

The 1,000-day program is centered on teaching people how to take care of and provide for themselves, rather than giving away free food and shelter.

“I’m convinced now more than ever, shelter programs, motel vouchers ... attitudes and actions of servicing people out of homelessness have seriously failed us,” said Megison, who has worked with the homeless for 20 years. “What we need is access to permanent solutions, period.”

He said roughly 75 percent of the families consist of single mothers, and the number of families with both a mother and father has risen recently.

“I know people are saying the recession is over and all that kind of stuff,” Megison says, “But our waiting list, unfortunately, just gets longer and longer.”